Tag: hospital

Foreboding (Yocho)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This is not exactly a remake, not exactly a reboot, not exactly a sequel. Most definitely a companion piece, though, and arguably the more effective of the two movies. And apparently, an edit of the director’s five-part series for Japanese satellite station Wowow, although it feels like a (well over two hours long) standalone feature. Kiyoshi Kurosawa revisits Before We Vanish / Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha (2017) for another story about the aliens clad in human bodies who steal concepts from people’s minds by touching a finger to a forehead E.T. (Steven Spielberg, 1982) style prior to a full scale invasion of Earth.

Where previously the director took the material and threw a cornucopia of different elements at it, this time round his efforts feel much more thought through and the resultant film far more consistent overall – a creepy and unsettling sci-fi paranoia thriller grounded in compelling, character-driven human drama.

Kurosawa builds his reinvented narrative round shop floor worker Etsuko (Kaho) whose friend Miyuki is going mad because of the strange presence in her home. Is it a ghost? No, it’s her father but she no longer has any concept of father. Or mother. Or brother and sister. Or family. An alien has removed this concept from her brain.

Her hospital employee husband Tatsuo (Shota Sometani) is behaving oddly too – experiencing pain in his wrist. He has been turned into a guide – a human who tells his alien controller from which humans to steal concepts. His controller is the newly arrived Dr. Matsuka (Masahiro Higashide) about whom Etsuko immediately senses something odd when she meets him.

Tatsuo’s wrist pain comes from the process of turning him into a guide which involved Matsuka’s grasping him by the wrist. The pair have been going around stealing concepts from people’s minds with Tatsuo suggesting the people (picking those he doesn’t particularly like) and Matsuka doing the stealing. As it turns out, they weren’t responsible for what happened to Miyuki. That was another alien and guide.

It further transpires that Etsuko is somehow resistant to the alien concept stealing process, which means the government wants to work with her. Kaho is terrific as the woman trying to hold on to a husband being driven off the rails through a mixture of forces both within and beyond his control, conjured by a suitably agonised performance from Sometani. Higashide gives off just the right degree of unsettling otherworldliness to make you believe he’s an alien walking around in a human body.

It’s not just the playing of the actors that makes this work, though. Kurosawa invests the whole thing with an incredible sense of dread – what if I round the next hospital corridor and that alien is waiting there for me? – and stretches the tension about as near to breaking point as you can imagine. A late scene in an expansive interior is basically a woman with a gun looking for an adversary who we know to be holding an axe in readiness for attack.

Such a scenario must have been executed in countless thrillers with varying degrees of suspense or lack of it. You don’t always know what you’re going to get with Kurosawa, but when he’s good he’s very good indeed – and this is edge of the seat stuff. Hard to believe that his other version of the same story is so average, unfocused and generally all over the place by comparison.

Yocho (Foreboding) plays in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF). Watch the film trailer (Japanese, no subtitles) below:

A Crimson Star (Makka Na Hoshi)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Y[/dropcap[o (Miku Komatsu), 14, soon to leave hospital, tells Yayoi (Yuki Sakurai) that the latter is her favourite nurse. “Even though I made you cry when I stuck that needle in your foot?,” comes the questioning reply. When Yo checks out a day or so later, she learns that Yayoi is no longer working at the hospital.

Given to sneaking out via her bedroom window at any time of the day or night, some time later Yo is out walking at night when she sees two people having sex in a car. They get out. She’s sure she’s seen Yayoi and for confirmation takes Daisuke, a friend her own age, to see. Later, she leaves home and moves in with Yayoi. Who tries to put her off doing so.

In the course of working as a prostitute, Yayoi has struck up a relationship with a married man who loves taking her paragliding. But their spiritual connection seems at odds with their physical one. While Yayoi lets Yo stay with her out of a sense of protection, Yo is slowly developing a crush on Yayoi. There’s an idea about distance and attainability with Yo glimpsing a crimson paraglider unaware it might be Yayoi.

On her occasional return visits home, in and out through her bedroom window, Yo runs into trouble when she encounters her mother’s partner who is both violent towards and attempts to sexually abuse her.

Yayoi and subsequently Yo take refuge from their lives in a small observatory where they can open the telescope doors and gaze at the stars for long periods of time. It’s a place Yo and Daisuke have long admired but been unable to access.

If Yo and Yayoi are a sometime dysfunctional mother and daughter or occasional dysfunctional lovers – and Yo’s own family an example of an emotionally distant mother protecting a child-abusive partner – at least Daisuke’s family are offered as proof that some families provide a nurturing and caring environment. So much so, in fact, that when at one point his family takes her in it turns out a pleasant experience.

Female Japanese director Aya Igashi has an extraordinary way of expressing emotions and feelings on screen. She has also found some very effective ways of shooting sex scenes. For instance in silhouette, so even though you know (and hear) exactly what’s happening, you can see virtually nothing. A Crimson Star is neither exploitative nor titillating, yet it absolutely gets to the heart of the matter. The female gaze, perhaps?

This accomplished and highly original first feature is unlike any other movie this writer has ever seen. Hopefully, we’ve not heard the last of Aya Igashi who, at a mere 22 years old, is surely a talent to watch.

A Crimson Star plays in the Raindance Film Festival. Watch the film trailer below: